


Run

by Pixel_Runner



Series: Building Empire [10]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Flight Simulators, For Gosh Sakes Watch Your Language!, Gen, Grand Theft Spaceship, Hunting, Jefferies Tubes, Not Beta Read, One Shot, Running, Stealing Vehicles, Tracking by Scent, continuity errors, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-11-16 11:03:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11251797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pixel_Runner/pseuds/Pixel_Runner
Summary: Based on a comment prompt about the Carnivores on the Eclector hunting crew members for sport, but not actually for food.  No one gets killed.  It's all fun and games, until ...Takes place before the epilogue of Buying Loyalty and during Alone.





	1. Hide

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Impossiblegirl2015](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Impossiblegirl2015/gifts).



> I just couldn't wait until April. Happy really late birthday or completely, stupidly early birthday.

 

The first time they tried this, Tullk gave Amelia a ten minute head start before he 'released the hounds' as she called it.  Fourteen minutes after she left the bridge she was tackled to the ground as the pack of carnivores caught up to her.  She didn't want to try again.

 

"The point of the this, for me anyway, isn't to be attacked by crew members.  I'm in it for the run and that wasn't any fun." she said.

 

Yondu wasn't happy that she had to clean debris from her knee and shoulder where Brahl had brought her down.

 

Amelia wasn't happy having to treat Brahl for an unexplained blow-out fracture and random nail gun injury. 

 

The second through tenth time they tried, Amelia went for a nice thirty minute jog and Tullk had the boys try to track her after she was done.  That was no fun for them.  There was no urgency.  At that point the whole exercise was put on indefinite hold.

 

Then Amelia cornered Winch and asked for help. "Look, they are going to catch me on the straight away every time.  I'm not sprinting, I'm jogging and they are all taller than I am.  They have longer legs."

 

"What does that have to do with me?" he rumbled.

 

"Oh, come on!  Winch!  You are head of maintenance, you must know some secret access tunnels, air ducts what ever.  I'm smaller than they are, If I want to lose them, I have to be able to squeeze through some small space where they can't fit.. and where I won't break anything or get electrocuted."

 

"Hmm."  Winch considered this.  He pulled up the ship's blue prints and called over Zvi.  They spent the couple of hours planning a running route where her size and Zvi's knowledges of the ship would be an advantage.  After a test run, they made a day of it and planned another dozen.

 

Winch's perspective was that if she could get to the Rusalka, it would count as an escape.  This pissed Andrei off because Yondu still wouldn't teach her how to fly.  So he installed a flight simulator and Winch taught her how to hotwire an M-class.

 

Zvi thought that was the coolest thing ever.

 

Andrei thought Yondu would kill them all if he ever found out.

 

For the next month, Amelia secretly spent the afternoons climbing through the bowels of the Eclector and then flight simulating stealing an M-class.  After a couple of weeks, she was reasonably good at that, so Andrei added pursuit fighters and Dave taught her evasive maneuvers.  She generally got shot down before she made it to a jump point, but she was working hard at avoiding that.

 

In the mean time, what was effectively Parkour had made her body lean and toned and neither of her boys had any complaints.  Especially when she started doing yoga to avoid calf cramps.

 

Tullk and Czar had resumed combat training and were happy with her increased flexibility as well.  Tullk started bring in crew for her to practice fighting.  Amelia complained that this wasn't fair.  They weren't allowed to hurt her and Tullk was encouraging her to try to actually kill them.

 

"Amelia.  Relax.  You are not actually that good.  You aren't going to hurt anyone."

 

This was not a comforting statement, but she couldn't just keep fighting Czar.  She needed more diverse opponents and Tullk flat out refused to get in the ring with her, but he bought her a knife and told her that next time she was running and got tackled by a carnivore, she should try to stab him.

 

"Right,  I'll make sure to aim for somewhere I can easily fix." she said with an eyeroll.

 

Two months after that, Amelia offered to let the carnies hunt her again.  

 

She got a 15 minute head start and ran for seven minutes, then doubled back for four and climbed through an access panel.  There was a ten story drop to the hydroponics level, but there wasn't any artificial gravity in the conduits, so she had to drag herself downwards.  The garden level was always deserted, so as long as she avoided the automatic harvesters, she was fine.  She ran at a dead sprint for 700 meters then wiggled through an air duct and dropped out through the ceiling in the landing bay.  She ran over the tops of the ships until she reached the Rusalka and hacked past the door controls (despite her palm print being authorized to open them).  Then she hot wired it and used the flight simulator to escape.  She made it to with in a kilometre of the jump point before she was shot down.

 

Frig.

 

Then she had a stretch, a shower and a nap.

 

When she woke up, she was kinda hungry so she headed to the dining room, which was surprisingly empty.  She ended up sticking her head into the kitchen and shouting. “Hello?”

 

Krss’s head whipped around and he ran to the intercom.  A general announcement was made, “I have found the medic.  She is in the main dining hall.” He released the talk button, “Are you injured?”

 

“No?”

 

“She is uninjured.  I repeat, she in unharmed.”

 

“What the hell, Krss?”

 

“You’ve been missing for four hours.  No one could find you.  Yondu organized a ship wide search party.”

 

“Oops.   I guess I win the tracking contest, huh?”


	2. Seek

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yondu's POV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again writing on the night shift.

This was a stupid ass idea.  Yondu was used to getting those from the crew, but this was the first time he wanted to call out his medic.

 

She wanted to run.  What kind of bullshit is that?  Who WANTS to run?  You don't run for fun.  They had a weight room and a combat ring.  In fight or flight you took fight. We are Ravagers.  We don't RUN AWAY.

 

Except, he had made the mistake of voicing that opinion around Tullk, who had given Yondu a incredulous look.

 

"So.. if we are boarded, you want her to stand her ground and fight, Boss?"

 

Yondu damn near whistled the man a new one, except you can't actually kill the bastard.  And he had a point.

 

Fuck.

 

Which is why, Captain Udonta was currently on the intercom making an announcement. "Our medic is playin' war games with the Achemonians under the direction of Tullk Ul-zyn.  Anyone who gets in the way will be dinner.  Don't fuck with me on this one.  I am not in the mood to put up with any shit."

 

Tullk figured she could do with a ten minute head start.  Yondu shoulda vetoed at that point,

 

But he didn't and now he was watching her trying to pick grit out of the skin on the back of her shoulder.  She had been wearing pants so the scrape on her knee wasn't too bad.  Except for the part where she laughingly called it rug burn.

 

He wanted to gut Brahl.  She was trying to shrug it off.  So he had to be subtle.  He waited two days before shooting Bralh in the shoulder with the nail gun.

 

What?  That was subtle.  For him.  He missed the guy's lung.  It might even have been on purpose.

 

He was happier when she decided to do her run, then have the carnies track her route after she was safely back on the bridge.  Stupid carnivores complained that was no fun.  RUNNING is NOT supposed to be FUN, god damn it.  Still it was a good excuse to call it off.

 

Months passed the the girl took up something called _yoga_.  That was much more fun to watch.  And she started getting some muscles.  Holy shit they looked good on her.  She would put on something called a _Sprts Bra_ and _Yoga pants_ and bend over with her ass in the air to stretch out with her legs. 

 

Kraglin asked him once what yoga meant.  Yondu was willing to guess it was something like "make your dick chub even when you were fucked empty last night."  But he said it with confidence. 

 

Kraglin gave him a long look. "I knew that," he replied. 

 

He was surprised when she asked for another try. He would have said no, but she distracted him by stretching her shoulders in a way that stuck out her tits. Then she was so excited when he said, "Uh huh," that he couldn't quite bring himself to take it back. 

 

Fuck. They were only giving her a fifteen minute head start, so this should be over in about twenty. Both he and Tullk had threatened everyone with painful death if she got hurt again. 

 

She bolted from the bridge, slamming past some junior crew man who opened the door and sprinted down the hall.  Tullk looked as surprised as Yondu felt.  Brahl looked turned on as fuck and Tullk punched him, hard enough to knock him down.  “No.  This is just for fun.  If you can’t remember that, you’re staying here.”

 

When the fifteen minute head start was up, Tullk set the clock to zero and said, “Off you go, then.”  In a gentle tone of voice like he was encouraging his kids to go to the park instead of turning a pack  of Achemonians loose of a girl he liked.  Brahl howled, the boys dropped to all fours and loped away after her.

 

Yondu watched the clock.  “This was a stupid ass idea.”

 

Fifteen minutes.

 

Twenty minutes.

 

Thirty minutes.  Kraglin had Krss bring Yondu up a beer.

 

At forty five minutes, he decided to try to find her on the surveillance cameras.  He couldn’t, but the Achemonians were pacing once stretch of hallway.  Tullk went to investigate.  He watched Tullk walk an odd route down the halls, then past the Achemonians.  Then he stopped and looked around.  He closed his eyes and twisted his head back and forth.  Then he walked back to where the boys were waiting and sniffed around a bit.

 

Then he looked straight at the camera.

 

Yondu felt his heart clench.

 

Tullk walked over to the nearest intercom and haled the bridge.  “We lost her boss.”

 

Kraglin was on the comms in an instant, ship wide broadcast, “Amelia, contact the bridge.”

 

They waited.

 

Tullk tried asking that any crew member with eyes on the medic contact the bridge.

 

They were at the hour and a half mark now.  Yondu was ready to slaughter Tullk and the whole pack of fucking carnies.

 

Calls started coming in from different departments asking if she had been found.  Kraglin took them because Yondu was too busy yelling cuss words at the crew.

 

Yondu announced that all non-essential personnel were required to assist with a search for the missing medic.

 

At the three hour mark, Tullk still hadn’t come back to the bridge, but he was organizing a deck by deck search.  Winch called in and said that he would assist with the search if ordered to but-

 

Yondu ordered him to.

 

"-BUT, Captain, she is a very capable woman.  If she has not been found the most reasonable explanation is that she is not ready to be found."

 

Yondu repeated his order and a grumbling Winch offered to put on a suit and check if she got out an air lock.

 

Yondu blanched powder blue.

 

Kraglin looked at him.  “Winch has got a point Captain-“

 

“She knows not to go near the air locks.”

 

“No!  Not about that.  You remember what a slippery little shit Pete was.  He was forever hiding in Jefferies Tubes or little corners none of us could fit into.  Maybe this is just some Terran thing.”

 

Three hours and thirty seven minutes in and Krss announce he had found the medic, and she was unharmed.

 

The whole bridge cheered. For a moment, it sounded like the whole ship cheered.  Yondu took a moment to enjoy the relief that settled around him like a blanket.

 

Then he went straight to white hot rage.

 

“What the fuck did she think she was doing?” He demanded of no one as he stormed toward the bridge.

 

“Captain, wait!”  Kraglin called.  “She might have gotten stuck some where or found a closet with no intercom or … or…  hell, did anyone check if she was just sleeping in your room?  Would anyone think to search there?  They wouldn’t have made it past the lock.”

 

Yondu slowed and tried to calm down.

 

“You go in there like this an shout at her, she’s gonna be afeard.”

 

Yondu stopped.  He glared at Kraglin.  Then he turned and punched the wall until his knuckles bled.  Until the bones in his hands broke.  Until he felt better.

 

“Come on.”

 

He left a blood trail all the way to the dining hall.  Amelia was sitting with Krss, who had his arm around her.  Tullk was standing in the corner. 

 

“I didn't mean to scare everyone.  I didn’t hear the announcements.  I kept expecting you to find me any minute.”

 

“Where were you?”  Tullk asked.

 

Yondu couldn’t speak to him without screaming so he gritted his teeth instead.

 

“In my room on The Rusalka.  It was kind of a stupid hiding place. I thought it would be the about the third place you looked.”

 

Kraglin wanted to know, “What were the first two places we should have looked?”

 

Amelia blushed, but said promptly, “Yondu’s room or the MedBay.”

 

“We checked the MedBay.”

 

Amelia noticed Yondu’s dripping knuckles.  Blood like indigo ink dripping on the floor.

 

“I am so, so sorry.”  She took a deep shuddering breath.  “Please let me take care of those.”  She nodded to his hands.

 

Yondu nodded and turned and walk out, heading to the MedBay.  Amelia trailed after him.  He didn’t look at her.  “You hid, from a pack of Achemonians, in your room?”

 

“Yes.  But it worked.  They didn’t find me.”

 

Yondu started to laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feed the muse.


	3. Caught You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was expecting this to be rate E, but apparently I can't write lemons while on a week of nights.

Amelia had Yondu sit in one of the chairs. She grabbed a wound tray and the species specific saline and pulled over the work stool. 

 

The bleeding had mostly stopped.  This next bit was backwards for her. Back home, you tried to clean up a bit so the patient wouldn't bleed all over the X-ray room.  Well, if you could.   Here she could scan his hands first and know what she was dealing with first. 

 

Double boxers fractures, and not the first time this had happened, from the looks of it.  His hands looked like arthritis waiting to happen. 

 

There were some sort of implants in his hand bones.  The scanner popped up a window asking for an authorization code to begin repairs.  Yondu took it and used a retina scan to agree. 

 

As she watched, the breaks reduced them selves. Yondu sat still, but tense. He heart rate jumped, but if she hadn't been watching his vitals, she wouldn't have noticed. 

 

"I have pain meds for that."

 

"Don't wann'em."

 

Now was not the time to call him an idiot. But she thought it really hard as she used the freezing spray and started to clean the cuts. It was weird, she would have been prepared to bet money that the blue was just surface pigment, but no, Yondu literally had blue blood.  That made her snort.

 

“What?”

 

She shook her head.  “Back home we have a nick name for royalty, we call them Blue Bloods, but this is the first time I have ever actually seen blue blood.”

 

Yondu nodded.  “Yeah, that’s cuz the Kree been using Terra as a breeding ground for thousands of years.  Spacers look like kings to primitives.”

 

“Kree… like David.”

 

Yondu tensed.  “Yeah.  Asgard is supposed to make ‘em stop, but they got a short attention span.  I hear they’re back on Terra again, so everyone is bein’ extra careful like.”

 

“Asgard, like where Tullk is from?”

 

Now it was Yondu’s turn to snort, “Like where he was manufactured, yeah.”

 

Amelia frowned, “He isn’t cybernetic.”

 

“Nah, gengineered.  That’s why you go to him in my will.  We get dead or arrested, he won’t.  He’ll get took back to Asgard.  Can’t keep ‘im in a regular prison.  You'd be safe with him on Asgard, if it comes to that.  I wanna kill him over this, but putting a bunch of holes in ‘im won’t get ‘im dead.  It’ll just upset you.”

 

Amelia shuttered.  “Eww!  Yeah, don’t do that.  I don't want undead crew walking around.  That just sounds too much like some weird space zombie fanfic for me.”

 

Amelia finished cleaning the cuts.  She pulled out some antibiotic ointment and a started to careful paint that on.  Yondu’s hands were scarred.  She was pretty sure that one was teeth marks. She frowned a little.

 

“You mad you gotta take care of this?”

 

“No.  I’m just thinking you have been in a lot of fights in your life.”

 

Yondu laughed, “Oh, darlin’ you don’t know the half of it.”

 

“You could tell me sometime.”

 

“Maybe.  I ain’t drunk enough for that just now.”

 

There was a pack of artificial skin to put on, but it didn’t colour match.  She started getting ready to apply it anyway, when Yondu stopped her.  “Just the sticky bandage.  Save the skin for someone who wants to look pretty.”

 

Amelia nodded and got out the gauze.

 

“That stuff’s waterproof, right?”

 

“Sure.  Why?”

 

Yondu got up and made sure the door was sealed, then he came back and sat down.  “There’s a water shower in here.  I could wash your back.  You … I could try to let you wash mine.”

 

Amelia looked at him.  “We could see how that goes.  I give excellent back rubs.”

 

Yondu watched her tape up his knuckles.  “That’s what Kraglin keeps telling me.”

 

“You aren’t pushing me for things I don’t want to do.  If you aren't always OK being naked around me, I can respect that.”

 

“It ain’t the naked.”

 

“OK.”

 

“I aint pretty.  Don’t wanna give you more nightmares.”

 

“Yondu, I worked in war zones.  I can’t believe it will be worse than I have seen.  At least you are all healed up, without gangrene or maggots chewing on you.”

 

He looked at her.  “You seen a lot of that?”

 

“Enough.  The only thing here has been even close was some of the injuries during the mutiny and we have WAY more resources than I did before I left.”

 

He waited until she had his hands cleaned up to take off his coat.

 

“You always wear so many clothes.”

 

“I like having so many pockets.”  He dug through them and pulled out a ration bar for her.

 

Amalia looked at it.  “Did you start carrying these after you needed Kraglin to feed me that time on the bridge?”

 

At that point, Yondu had to choose between a hard truth and an easy lie.  He always squirrelled food away in his pockets.  He knew exactly what she was talking about, but he hadn’t known her well enough to share at that point.  “It’s complicated.”

 

She handed the ration bar back.  He tucked it away as he draped his coat over one of the beds.   “Why do I get the impression that you are one hell of a pickpocket?”

 

Yondu grinned.  “ ‘Cuz I am.”  He put his hands on her waist and leaned down to kiss her.  She arched her back up a little to kiss him back.  After a moment, her took a step back and took off his short coat thoughtfully.

 

When she kissed him, she would sometime put her hands on his biceps, but mostly she left them dangling by her side.  When she kissed Kraglin, her hands went everywhere.  This was upsetting.  Yondu wanted the full body grope, but didn’t at the same time.  Then there was that he had kissed her on the bridge, but Kraglin only got to touch her in the Captain’s quarters.

 

It was the exceptions to that rule that made him choke.  The crew she was most comfortable with got…  well, she called it “social contact.”  That had been… an adjustment for the boys.  Czar had really helped with that one, the big green bastard.

 

After that time she had kissed Dave, the fighter pilot had left for a month.  It was about the only thing that kept him alive.  Czar was still making a point of never being alone with her.  Then there was the week she spent pulling the skin of the Achemonians when they were moulting.  That was likely the only reason she felt comfortable enough to let them chase her in the first place.

 

Amelia wasn’t subtle, she would flat out tell anyone who asked that the crew would get “professional contact” (medical care), they could earn “social contact” starting from shoulder bumps and maybe working up to the occasional hug, depending on good behaviour.  But sexual contact was not on offer.

 

It had been all kinds of interesting watching her explain that to the new recruits last month.  He was pretty sure she had stabbed one, but somehow everyone was being real tight lipped about what exactly had happened to lead to the impromptu lecture in the dining hall.  That was another thing.  They all had settled into an arrangement where Yondu and the crew had a completely different relationship than Amelia and the crew.  He occasionally thought she had more respect than he did.

 

That bothered him, but he also knew she needed that to survive.  If you thought of the crew as a pack of dogs, she weren't challenging anyone’s ranking in the pack.  And it had become a thing, that having Amelia’s respect and ‘social contact’ gave you a higher standing with the other crew members.

 

“You still with me, Yondu?”

 

He was down to his shirt, scarf and pants now.  “Yeah."

 

“You don’t have to do this.”

 

“Don’t you be giving me an out.”  He took off the scarf.  “How’s your string holding out?”

 

“It’s pretty much gone. I have a few ends left that I might be able to work together in to a shawl or something, but that’s about it.”

 

He grunted.   He would have to do something about that.  And the way things were going, he would have to do something about that quick like before someone else did. 

 

He reminded himself, that she had seen it before, even if it was in the dark or while he had Kraglin distracting her.  This wasn't going to be completely new.  She would be ok with this.  He pulled off his shirt and lay it on the bed. As he turned to do this, his back was briefly to her.

 

She didn’t scream and point, or gasp or whimper.  When he turned back he looked at her face and she didn’t have that “poor baby" expression that he both hated and had learned to exploit.  She wasn’t even wearing her “don't scare the patient' face.  Just mild curiosity.

 

Yeah.  He could work with that.

 

“I’m betting you don’t want to talk about any of that.”

 

“Nope.”

 

“OK.  If you ever do, that’s OK.  You aren’t going to scare me off that way.”

 

Yondu idly wondered what it would take to scare her off at this point.  He didn’t want to go trying for that.  He stepped forward and put his hands back on her waist and kissed her again.

 

After a moment, he said, “You can touch me, if you want.”

 

She ran her hands over his chest.  “You know me, I do love this.”

 

She never said she loved him.  She would say she loved things he did or things about him or doing things to him, but she never said she loved him.  He never used the word at all.  It was the compromise they has reached.

 

“I ain’t as toned as somma the younger crew.”

 

She shrugged, “I’m not as pretty as the girls for hire at the ports we visit.”

 

He felt like he should deny that, tell her she was the most beautiful girl he had seen.  But the lie stuck in his throat because he knew she would see it for what it was.  He would always try to give her a truth when he could.  Fortunately, this one was easy.  “No one I’ld rather take home.”

 

That made her smile at least.

 

He looked at her.  Then slowly and carefully, turned his back on her.

 

After a moment she said, “Thank you.”

 

He nodded and went and sat on one of the chairs.  She climbed into his lap and cuddled on his chest.  He just sat there, stroking her arms.

 

After a moment her stomach made a loud demand to be fed.  He laughed.  Then his answered and she started to laugh too.

 

“Time for supper?” she suggested.

 

“Five more minutes.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hear some people eat lunch on their meal breaks. Where's the fun in that?
> 
> Feed the muse because the writer is living on bagged lunch.


End file.
